Density
by unwinding fantasy
Summary: It wasn't that Cloud was actively trying to kill himself. He just wanted to not exist. At least, that's what he'd thought. Maybe what he really needed was someone who understood the difference. [Clerith with some past Cloti mentions] [Modern Day AU] [Alcoholism] [Complete]


**Title:** _Density_  
 **Author:** unwinding fantasy  
 **Disclaimer:** _Final Fantasy VII_ ain't mine.  
 **Rating:** M for alcoholism, swearing, sex. All that neat stuff.  
 **Pairing:** Cloud x Tifa; Cloud x Aerith  
 **Summary:** It wasn't that Cloud was actively trying to kill himself. He just wanted to not exist. At least, that's what he thought. Maybe what he really needed was someone who understands the difference.  
 **Author's Note:** My Aerith is sassy and a little irreverent. Don't like, don't read. For those who are interested, YouTube playlist is here: /playlist?list=PLT_HC-esIJg5q25_UtZ6kk1pQyIRjUEwl

* * *

There's no pinpointing when it happened, no neat ten step story arc that lays out how Cloud spiralled to the bottom of every bottle and woke up reeking of gin and sin. Self-destruction: the purest kindness for a man who wasn't a violent alcoholic until he was, Tifa screaming on the other side of the busted in wall while the kids wailed in the background like police sirens. It wasn't like he'd ever hurt them (couldn't even if he wanted to; ten years of training meant Tifa would aikido his ass into yesteryear at the first whiff of danger) but explanations tended to fall on deaf ears when given in alcoholic exhalations.

She'd tried to help. For three long years, his childhood sweetheart turned best friend turned lover had dropped her cirrhosis-ridden aunt into conversation, had strategically abandoned AA pamphlets on the bench, always believing her one-dimensional pinup of the perfect little boy with golden hair would pull through. Tifa had placed him so, so high up. It happened so gradually he didn't notice the oxygen turning thin, lungs burning with each stuttering gasp, heart pounding against being pigeonholed. How do you explain to someone that you like them but you can't be their knight in shining armour?

In the end, Cloud walked because if he stayed, it would kill them both.

The room was dark when his eyes creaked open save the sliver of light the doorway permitted. The blankets were wrapped around him too tight, reminiscent of how Tifa used to embrace him at night and stop him from dreaming. He squinted at the object perched on the bedside table, an indistinguishable mass of burned yellows that blurred like a bottle of Jose Cuervo before he tumbled back into sleep.

The next time he woke, a door was swinging open on a woman ringed in fluorescence. She plucked his chart from the bottom of the bed and scanned it with the no-nonsense proficiency of all nurses. "And how are you feeling today, Mr Strife?"

It took a moment for Cloud to remember that was his name. Even the most basic title felt too dignified. "Like—" He cleared his throat, tried again. "Like Kerouac crossed with Cindy Lauper." He methodically began untucking the covers surrounding him.

The nurse blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Hungover when I just wanna have fun." _And get the hell out of here. That too._

"If dying of cirrhosis is your idea of fun, sure. Just let me tick off those discharge papers and you can be on your way." The sarcastic tone, which Cloud privately thought was unbecoming of a healthcare professional, was also refreshing after a lifetime of Tifa pardoning his sins. He sighed, a rush of air with all the feeling cut out. "There're worse ways to go."

"Well personally, I don't want to go at all but each to their own. Can you sit up? We need to check your blood pressure."

Cloud obliged. When the nurse leaned over to wrap the cuff around his bicep, her long braid fell forward and tickled his knee, bare where his gown had rucked up thanks to his fevered tossings. He did his best to ignore it, focusing instead on that indistinct yellow blob on his bedside table he'd noted earlier (Sunflowers. Tifa must've brought them.) The cuff's persistent squeeze didn't distract from the burning pain in his stomach, nor the cold press of the stethoscope on his pallid chest. He endeavoured to keep his breathing steady as the pressure eased and a small frown formed on her lips before she withdrew, the scratching of her pen on his chart and the beeping of the heart rate monitor loud in the otherwise silent room. Cloud rubbed the spot below his heart, feeling all of twelve in his ridiculous two sizes too small hospital gown as his gaze drifted across the nurse's nametag. _Aerith… Gainsborough? Sounds like some English vineyard._

"Aren't you going to ask?"

Cloud leaned forward, hands clasped between his legs, head bowed. The pain abated a little like that. "Ask what?"

"What the problem is. People usually want to know."

"Does it matter?"

"It should." Cloud stared at the floor, at the twin sensible black shoes pointing directly at his hunched form. The scratching stopped. He could practically feel her eyes boring into his skull. "It does to me. Keeping you alive is my job, after all."

"You get paid either way, don't you?"

The firm touch beneath his chin startled him but Cloud let her lift his head until their gazes met. Her clever green gaze cut straight through all his bullshit and his mouth turned dry, drained of cynicism and self-deprecation until all he could concentrate on was cataloguing the exact shade of her irises. _Chartreuse. Crème de Menthe. Absinthe._

"Elevated lipases, abdominal pain, increased heart rate, excessive sweating and," she tilted his head back enough to make him wince, "yellow sclera. All indicative of acute pancreatitis brought on by alcohol abuse."

Cloud shoved her hand away. "I never said anything about drinking."

"You mentioned you felt hungover."

"Yeah, because that's how I feel."

"The medics picked you up in a bar."

"I work there."

"You reeked of booze."

" _I work there."_

Nurse Gainsborough clicked her tongue, shoved his chart back into the holder at the base of his bed. "Must be handy," she sniffed.

And somewhere deep inside him, buried under layers upon layers of apathy, Cloud tapped into his rage. He barked a laugh, a harsh sound like beer bottles clinking together, and excavated some small measure of self-worth, enough to declare, "I don't have to put up with this."

Inexplicably, Nurse Gainsborough's expression softened. "No, you don't." She turned, pausing at the doorway to say, "I'll send somebody else to take care of you, Mr Strife."

* * *

Seventh Heaven looked even dingier when Cloud, feeling like he could fade into the walls, ducked inside a handful of days. He took up his usual position at the table in the far corner, vaguely amazed that the short timeframe had been enough to change the entire barscape, wondering if the tabletops had always been so filthy, engraved with false declarations of love ringed in residual beer. Tifa hated when the surfaces got stained by fuckers who refused coasters, a throwback to when she'd first purchased the shitty establishment with grand plans to turn it into some classy cocktail lounge. Polish all you want, a turd is still a turd is still a dive bar is still a college dropout with poor coping mechanisms.

"Hey there, stranger."

Tifa still looked at him with a smile tinged with days gone by. She placed a glass in front of him, probably not vodka. He took a sip and tried not to let his disappointment show. "Sorry I'm late," he offered.

The smile slipped a fraction. "You sure you're up for work?" It was good of her, always finding him a job after his extended periods of absence even though his slender build and reticent nature weren't exactly bouncer material. Cloud figured she still had feelings for him. Occasionally, he'd tell himself he should move far, far away, stop giving her false hope. At the very least, he should stop fucking her every other month. But he needed something to make him feel almost as much as he needed the cash, and if that made him a bad person, well.

Cloud shrugged. "Doctor says the danger's passed. Should do me good to get back into the swing of things. Besides, I just have to stand around and look menacing, right?" He was talking shit to stop himself from confessing how much he was dying for the ruthless burn of bourbon. He'd always been a laughable bouncer, more inclined to slouch on the barstools pushing back pint after pint of cheap liquor than throw out any undesirables. "Thanks for the flowers by the way."

"Hn?"

"The sunflowers. You left them for me at the hospital."

"Oh," Tifa shifted uncertainly, "That must've been someone else. I didn't get a chance to send anything."

"Oh. Right."

The silence rolled over them, amplified by the din of barroom chatter and last year's electropop. Eventually, Tifa said, "Well, I've gotta pick up the kids. See you later?" The hesitation laced in the last words made Cloud shiver.

"Sure." He'd order a beer as soon as the door closed behind her.

At least that was the plan. It wasn't a good one, easily derailed by a pink dress and pair of pretty legs propped on a barstool, highball balanced on her knee. The lewd comments slid off her until the dive's drunken denizens shook their heads, tossed their drinks back in defeat and began scoping for an attainable girl. Swathed in cigarette smoke, Cloud watched from his corner.

What she radiated wasn't purity - Cloud suspected she'd seen too much in too few years for that. She was a study in dichotomy, edges soft like new shoots on the first day of spring yet fading into the darkness like winter's approach. Or maybe fading was wrong. She wasn't being consumed. Rather, she was giving herself freely, relinquishing something. Before he really knew what he was doing, Cloud threw back his water, shoved off his seat and planted himself beside her, signalling the bartender. They sat wordlessly for a full five minutes before he cleared his throat to offer a solitary, "Hey."

The Gainsborough girl tilted her head. "Mr Strife. No surprise seeing you here."

Cloud murmured thanks as his drink slid towards him. He took a sip, revelling in the way the liquid stripped his throat before replying, "Can't say the same for you. Aren't nurses supposed to steer clear of this kind of place?"

"Good thing I'm not a nurse anymore," she said with an edge of bitterness that caught him off guard. He should've left it at that, hardly qualified to deal with his own hang-ups let alone anybody else's, but the silhouette she carved from shadows was too intriguing. "Let me guess: you showed the wrong person that winning nurturing attitude of yours," he ventured.

She gulped half her drink like she could swallow her problems. It was a look he knew well, something he'd courted for twenty-odd years, but where he'd hang his head she wore it like a badge of honour, meeting his eyes with a weird mix of defiance and contrition. "I should apologise for that. You were my last patient that day so I wanted to check up on you before…" She trailed off. Cloud waited until she took a deep breath and started again. "My boss used to get handsy sometimes. I'd usually throw him off with a couple of meaningless promises. You know, a giggle at his asinine joke here, a batting of eyelashes there. It was against policy but he'd let me bring flowers for the patients nobody cared about in exchange for putting up with his passes. Seemed like a fair trade until the asking price got too steep, you know?"

Cloud's blood stilled. "Christ… Did he, did he hurt you or something?"

She laughed like sunshine, a beautiful, free sound that cut through the dark room. "Nooooo," she lilted, flicking her braid over her shoulder, "I kneed him in the balls and told him there wasn't enough chlorine in the world to make me wanna take a dip in that gene pool."

Cloud's mouth dropped open. "Serious?"

"Not really. In the heat of the moment I was too mortified to even tell him no, let alone think up a witty insult like that." She toyed with the hem of her dress and against his better judgement, Cloud found the unexpected shyness endearing. She glanced up. "The kneeing in the balls part is true though."

He felt it eventuate in his lower abdomen, somewhere behind where the pancreatitis had been, a bubbling sensation that tickled his heart on the way up and past his lips. The ex-nurse watched him with a tinge of worry to her curiosity as Cloud laughed and laughed and laughed like he was only just remembering how. Her hand on his shoulder was tentative as she asked, "Er, are you okay?"

Cloud wiped tears from the corners of his eyes. "Sorry, long day." He finished his drink.

She sat back to a respectable distance and rested her elbow on the bench, cradling her head. "Relationship woes? I saw you talking to that tall woman. She your girlfriend or something?"

"Or something."

"Huh." She tipped back her drink. He liked the way her glass thunked on the wooden surface: decisive, straightforward. "Considering I'm newly liberated from lecturing people on what not to put in their bodies, how about I encourage bad habits and you can tell me all about her."

With a flick of her fingers, she motioned for two more, and Cloud felt the warmth of inevitability settle around his shoulders.

* * *

He regretted not taking her somewhere nicer but the narrow bunk upstairs did the trick, Aerith pouring out of her pink dress and undoing her braid like an unfurling flower as Cloud struggled to unclasp his belt and slide his pants down enough for his dick to slip out. They fucked, hot and fast, and Cloud came too quickly and she kissed away his babbled apologies before he brought her to completion with his mouth. For some reason, having his nose nestled between her thighs felt more intimate than actually being inside her, the soft gasps and words of praise breathed without guile or expectation, a helpless litany that made Cloud hard all over again.

They didn't cuddle afterwards, which was the way he liked it, Aerith content to trace designs on his back that connected the faded freckles from point A to point B while he told her how he missed being a kid. Not the bit where he'd messed up his first senior game, earned the disgust of the rest of the baseball team and ruined his shot at a scholarship, no. He missed the Before, propped against the headboard with a bowl of popcorn between Tifa's legs as he explained this play or pointed out why this guy was the best fielder in the league and what he wouldn't give for the Sevens to get past the quarter finals for once in their damn lives. Before, when he'd lived with a crackling energy that rushed through his veins like the roar of a motorcycle. Before, when he didn't need liquid courage to peel back his eyelids every morning and exist.

"Why the flowers?" he asked. _For the patients nobody cared about_ , she'd said, but he couldn't find it in him to be affronted. After all, his existence had been greyscale up until that moment. Funny how lives can turn on such innocuous events, how make or break can be distilled into the way a pair of green eyes appraise you over your sixth beer.

Her warmth dissipated. Cloud followed, rolling over and propping his head up with one hand, letting the other wander through Aerith's hair. The moonbeams jutting through the single window made her face unreadable. "Don't flatter yourself, Little League." She blinked up at the ceiling then turned to face him, a half smile gracing her lips. "Honestly? You looked like you could use a little light in your life. So uninterested," she tweaked his nose, "like you'd accepted whatever terrors or boredom the universe had in store. Like you were just waiting for time to run out."

"And now?"

"Now you are a changed man, thanks to my vaginal powers." Cloud choked on air; Aerith tittered. "No really. You're exactly the same, just a little more… present."

Cloud mulled that over. Aerith wriggled out of bed, retrieved her clothing and slowly began dressing in the dark. "That's it?" Cloud said, instantly hating himself for the lapse.

Aerith was kind though. She knelt and carded her fingers through Cloud's unruly locks, brushing them out of his eyes and smoothing the worry lines from his forehead. "Next time I see you, you'll be out of this place. You'll stop with this voluntary purgatory thing. Tifa will move on. You'll be a better dad than you could've been tangled up in these memories." She placed a kiss between his eyebrows. "And maybe, just maybe, you'll be bringing me flowers."

* * *

A street. Rain. Parking his bike at the station and hastening along the slick pavement, Cloud checked his watch. _Shit._ He'd never been late picking up the kids but there was a first time for everything, crossing the street against the lights, noticing too late that doughnut central was located directly across the road. _Shit._ Getting booked for jaywalking on his first day in town was definitely not high on his list of priorities, and he briefly cursed Tifa for moving to such a crappy place, business expansion be damned. Her apartment was meant to be around here somewhere. He squinted at the street signs, swiping at a stray drop of water that snaked along the bridge of his nose. He usually liked the rain, something in the freshness of earth and promise of life that reminded him of somebody he'd known once, but whenever deadlines were involved it became a major inconvenience.

At least the trickle of water down drainpipes no longer brought to mind the measured pour of scotch on the rocks, he thought wryly as he weaved through the crowd, wondering if Tifa's fiancé would mind terribly when Cloud brought half the Atlantic through the door with him. Maybe he should change his tagline? _Strife Delivery Service: bringing you all your unwanted oceanic needs._ It had a certain ring to it.

Hurrying, he didn't notice the cart until he ran smack into it and upturned the entire thing, jarring his hip enough to bruise bone. He hissed, rubbing the spot gingerly, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand on his back, a woman's voice saying, "Crap, are you okay?"

Instinctually, Cloud knelt to help, uncaring of the way water seeped into his new pants. "Yeah. Sorry I messed up your…" He cast his gaze around the multi-coloured carnage, petals strewn about like organic confetti. "…flowers?" The roses he was holding confirmed it, Cloud's eyebrows crinkling in bemusement. When he handed her the flowers, their fingers brushed and Cloud's eyes lifted to meet that quick green gaze he'd been chasing these past five years. She bent down, her perfume mingling perfectly with the petrichor. The unbridled joy on her face coaxed a smile from Cloud's lips.

"Not exactly what I had in mind," Aerith teased.


End file.
